Tag: Austerity
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Portuguese Labour Market Reforms in the Aftermath of the Eurozone Crisis: The Problems Behind the Recovery
This is a extended repost of a blog written with Jasper Simons for Critcom, the blog of the Council of European Studies. If one were to believe the assessments of European institutions, Portugal is on the path to recover from the severe economic crisis it suffered from 2010 onwards, and the drastic reforms implemented in…
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How did David Cameron manage to win the 2015 elections in spite of austerity?
The poor hit by austerity don’t vote, while the rich who benefit do How can we explain the Conservative victory in last week’s British elections in the context of the austerity measures the Tories have been pushing through since they came to office? Indeed, even if the deficit hasn’t come down near the levels announced…
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Syriza shows the failure of ‘cartel politics’
As expected, the radical left party Syriza was the big winner of the Greek elections, coming only two seats short of an absolute majority in parliament. But it’s unclear if new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will be able to effectively pursue his anti-austerity agenda and renegotiate the terms of the Greek bailout with creditors — and he will…
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Dealing with email bankruptcy
On January 1st, New York Times journalist Nick Bilton, acknowledging that he would never be able to answer all of them, deleted a backlog of 46,315 unanswered emails and, officially declared email bankruptcy. A number of high-profile individuals have declared email bankruptcy over the last decade, the first being Lawrence Lessig in 2004. Just like…
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What if More Austerity Meant More Immigration?
Since January 1st, citizens from Romania and Bulgaria can freely access the labour markets of all EU member states, including the United Kingdom. Fed by the threat of UKIP and a tabloid press that doesn’t really bother with facts, both Tories and Labour are up in arms in the face of a potential “invasion” of…
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The Vicious Circle of Inequality, Debt, Crisis, and Austerity
We are in a time of austerity. Public services are being cut, social benefits are being capped, and real wages are shrinking. In the last 5 years, the UK has gone through a big wage squeeze: real wages have declined by 5.5% since 2010, on par with countries such as Greece and Portugal. All these…
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The Size of Austerity
The data come from Andrew Watt’s and Sotiria Theodoropoulou’s ETUI report, (p. 14) based on a survey of country experts. Some data, from Italy and Spain most notably, are missing. This is partly based on 2011 estimates, and as we know forecasts have been all but reliable. There is more data on this on the…
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L’austérité au Portugal: de la dictature de Salazar au diktat de la Troika
Même s’il a été l’un des pays les plus touchés par la crise de la zone euro, le Portugal n’a pas fait beaucoup de vagues malgré une situation économique catastrophique. Au contraire, le gouvernement de Pedro Passos Coelho arrivé au pouvoir en 2011 a été un bon élève de la Troika, et a diligemment mis…